Texas
Texas Republicans who defied Gov. Greg Abbott on school vouchers face mounting primary attacks
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Texas House Republicans who tanked Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher agenda last year are facing a growing onslaught in their primaries as his long-promised revenge tour reaches its final month.
A national pro-voucher group, the School Freedom Fund, is launching a $1.15 million TV ad blitz across eight primaries Wednesday, part of a major ramp-up by Abbott’s allies on the issue. Another pro-voucher outfit, AFC Victory Fund, endorsed 13 primary challengers Tuesday and has already sent out multiple mail pieces attacking incumbents. And Abbott himself is set to return to the campaign trial this week to stump for both pro-voucher incumbents — and challengers.
It all marks the long-telegraphed fallout from last year’s legislative sessions, when a group of House Republicans held firm against Abbott’s crusade for letting parents use taxpayers dollars to take their kids out of public schools. His effort came crashing down in November, when 21 House Republicans voted to strip a voucher program out of a wide-ranging education bill, House Bill 1.
Sixteen of those Republicans are now running for reelection, and most are being targeted by Abbott and allied groups. Most are also in the crosshairs of Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is separately working to unseat dozens of House Republicans who voted to impeach him last year.
The School Freedom Fund is an arm of the Club for the Growth, the national anti-tax group, and its new TV ad buy spans broadcast, cable and satellite across the eight districts. The buy targets Reps. Gary VanDeaver of New Boston, Travis Clardy of Nacogdoches, Ernest Bailes of Shepherd, Hugh Shine of Temple, DeWayne Burns of Cleburne, Glenn Rogers of Graford, Reggie Smith of Sherman and Steve Allison of San Antonio.
“Candidates need to realize they can’t claim to be conservative while simultaneously opposing school freedom and taking cash from radical education bureaucrats, and voters will hold them accountable on election day,” School Freedom Fund President David McIntosh said in a statement.
The messaging against the incumbents has been varied. One of School Freedom Fund’s ads specifically goes after Clardy for saying in a November TV interview that his district does not have a problem with “woke teachers.” The narrator then calls Clardy wrong and says the Nacogdoches school district “brought in a critical race theory specialist for curriculum training.”
Other attacks are casting the lawmakers’ votes against the voucher program as opposition to the other components of House Bill 1, including teacher pay raises and increased public school funding.
The advertising blitz is being overwhelmingly funded by one man: Jeff Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire whose top issue is alternatives to public education. He has been a multimillion-dollar donor to the School Freedom Fund, AFC Victory Fund and — more recently — Abbott, cutting the governor a $6 million check in December.
The incumbents, who mostly laid low after casting their decisive votes in November, are increasingly speaking out against the attacks. Rogers said in a direct-to-camera video released Tuesday that he would not cow to the “out-of-state voucher lobby, which is pumping millions of dollars into Texas to kill public education.”
“I have something important to tell you: I can’t be bought, I can’t be bullied and I can’t be intimidated,” Rogers told voters. “I will only be your representative.”
State Rep. John Raney, the retiring College Station Republican who authored the amendment that removed the voucher proposal, sought to set the record straight in a newspaper op-ed published last week. He said House Bill 1 “undoubtedly would have passed the House” without vouchers if its author had not pulled it down after Raney’s amendment passed.
“Gov. Abbott took his ball and went home shifting his focus to retaliation at the polls,” Raney said. “Shame on you, Gov. Abbott.”
After an economic development trip to India, Abbott was set to return to the campaign trail Tuesday with a series of stops to boost mostly incumbents. But on Thursday, he is scheduled to visit Mineral Wells to rally with Rogers’ opponent, Mike Olcott, Abbott’s first known event for a challenger since early December.
One of the new ads from School Freedom Fund boosts Olcott, highlighting his support from the governor and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
Abbott has also made known his anger with another anti-voucher House Republican, Rep. Drew Darby of San Angelo, whose campaign website falsely claimed Abbott’s endorsement up until recent days. Abbott’s campaign announced Monday it had sent Darby a cease-and-desist letter reminding Darby that Abbott has endorsed his challenger, Stormy Bradley — “a true conservative.”
Darby’s campaign has not responded to a request for comment.
AFC Victory Fund has also been getting more involved in primaries. It had already announced opposition to a dozen of the anti-voucher House Republicans before endorsing specific challengers to them Monday.
Its latest mail piece portrays the incumbents in a “Wanted” poster, saying they are being sought for “working against schools, teachers, parents, and kids.” The mailer says they not only denied school vouchers but also “$4,000 pay raises for teachers” and “over $97 million in funding for our local schools.”
The line of attack has put the incumbents on the defensive over the convoluted legislative process that surrounded Abbott’s last-ditch attempt at vouchers in November.
“The removal of the voucher proposal from the bill did not kill the teacher pay raise portion or the section eliminating the STAAR test or any other funding that was appropriately included in the bill or our conservative state budget that we passed this session,” Burns wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. “The bill, and ultimately, those other provisions died because the author killed the bill himself by not allowing it to proceed to a vote once the voucher spending was removed.”
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Texas
North Texas middle school closes after a norovirus outbreak
A middle school in the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD is closed Friday after an outbreak of norovirus.
According to the school district, they closed Creekview Middle School in Fort Worth on Friday to sanitize and clean the building. The district said they plan on reopening the school on Monday.
The district said children started to get sick on Tuesday with what appeared to be a stomach virus and that on Wednesday it spread to a larger group.
EMSISD said they reached out to the Tarrant County Public Health Department and that they recommended disinfecting and cleaning the school on Wednesday night and reopening the next day.
More cases continued to be reported on Thursday, so the public health department then recommended that they clean again and close the campus on Friday.
Parents were notified of the district’s decision on Thursday afternoon.
The district has not said how many students and staff were sickened in the outbreak.
Officials with Children’s Medical Center said that because norovirus is highly contagious and resistant to many common hand sanitizers, it presents a unique challenge for families.
The hospital says hand sanitizer isn’t enough and recommends thorough hand washing with soap and water. They also recommend parents keep their children home for a full 48 hours after symptoms stop to prevent further outbreaks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there are approximately 2,500 norovirus outbreaks in the United States each year and that they are most common from November through April. For further tips on preventing the spread of norovirus, visit the CDC.
Texas
Trump heads to Texas, where 3 friends are battling it out in the Senate Republican primary
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump just can’t seem to choose among friends in the Texas Senate Republican primary.
So when he travels to the state on Friday for his first post- State of the Union trip, where he plans to promote his energy and economic policies, Trump will have all three candidates in the competitive race join him — just days before his party casts ballots in the primary race.
Sen. John Cornyn is battling for his fifth term and is being challenged by state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt in a primary fight that has become viciously personal. And all three men, missing the coveted endorsement from Trump, have been trying to highlight their ties to him as they ramp up their campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
For his part, Trump will be seeking to ride the message of his State of the Union address from Tuesday, where he declared a return to economic prosperity and a more secure America — two centerpiece arguments for Republicans as they campaign to keep their congressional majorities this fall.
Trump’s hesitation to endorse in the Texas Senate primary speaks to the tricky dynamics of the race.
Cornyn is unpopular with a segment of Texas’ GOP base, in part for his early dismissiveness of Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign and for his role in authoring tougher restrictions on guns after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. But Senate GOP leadership and allied groups see Cornyn as the stronger general election candidate, in light of a series of troubles that have shadowed Paxton.
Paxton beat impeachment on fraud charges in 2023, and has faced allegations of marital infidelity by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, right, is joined by former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, left, during a campaign stop in Austin, Texas, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. Credit: AP/Eric Gay
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have urged Trump to endorse Cornyn. They and allied campaign groups argue that the seat would cost the party hundreds of millions more to defend with Paxton as the candidate.
“It is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee,” Scott told Fox News on Wednesday.
Hunt, a second-term Houston-area representative, was a later entry to the race, but claims a kinship with Trump, having endorsed him early in the 2024 race. Hunt campaigned regularly for Trump and earned a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
If no candidate reaches 50% in Tuesday’s primary, the top two finishers will advance to a May 26 runoff.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, arrive before President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. Credit: AP/Allison Robbert
Cornyn’s campaign and a half-dozen allied groups have poured more than $63 million into the race since last fall, chiefly trying to slow Paxton but recently attacking Hunt in an effort to keep him from making it to the runoff.
Earlier this month, Trump feinted toward weighing in on the race when he said he was taking “a serious look” at endorsing in the Texas primary. He has since reaffirmed his neutrality.
Still, you wouldn’t know it from watching TV in Texas. Cornyn has been airing ads since last year touting his support for Trump’s agenda, even though his relationship with the president has been cool at times. Paxton and Hunt both have ads airing now featuring them standing with Trump.
“I like all three of them, actually. Those are the toughest races. They’ve all supported me. They’re all good. You’re supposed to pick one, so we’ll see what happens. But I support all three,” Trump said earlier this month.
The GOP battle comes as Democrats have a contested primary of their own in Texas between state Rep. James Talarico, a self-described policy wonk who regularly quotes the Bible, and progressive favorite U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
Trump hasn’t been shy about wading into other contested Republican primaries in the state. Parts of Corpus Christi fall within Texas’ 34th congressional district, where former Rep. Mayra Flores is fighting to reclaim her seat against the Trump-endorsed Eric Flores. (The two are not related.) The winner of the primary will face off against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, long a target of the GOP, whose district was redrawn to make it easier for a Republican to win.
Eric Flores will be at the Trump event at the Port of Corpus Christi, which technically is located in a neighboring district.
Elsewhere in the state, the president has also endorsed Rep. Tony Gonzales, who is fighting calls from his own party to resign from Congress after reports of an alleged affair with a former staffer who later died after she set herself on fire. Gonzales is refusing to step down and has said that there will be “opportunities for all of the details and facts to come out” and that the stories about the situation do not represent “all the facts.”
Gonzales is facing a primary challenge from Brandon Herrera, a gun manufacturer and gun rights influencer who Gonzales defeated by fewer than 400 votes in their 2024 runoff. The White House did not return a request for comment on Thursday on whether Trump stands by his endorsement of Gonzales.
Texas
Man sentenced to 15 years in Texas crash that killed founding member of The Chicks
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after admitting his reckless driving caused a head-on collision in rural West Texas that killed Laura Lynch, a founding member of the country music group now known as The Chicks, prosecutors said.
Domenick Chavez, 33, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection with Dec. 22, 2023, crash in Hudspeth County, according to a news release Tuesday from El Paso County District James Montoya, who also oversees nearby Hudspeth County.
The news release said Chavez was driving a truck westbound when he tried to pass four vehicles on a two-way undivided highway and collided head-on with Lynch’s eastbound truck. Lynch, 65, of Dell City, was trapped in her vehicle and died. Prosecutors said Chavez was traveling between 106 mph and 114 mph.
Prosecutors said alcohol wasn’t a factor in the crash but that Chavez was driving on a suspended license, which had been revoked due to his failure to comply with DWI-related surcharges and penalties from convictions in 2014 and 2017.
Lynch, along with Robin Lynn Macy and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer, formed The Dixie Chicks in the late 1980s. Lynch and Macy eventually left the band and Natalie Maines joined the sisters. The trio hit commercial fame with their breakthrough album “Wide Open Spaces” in 1998 and have won 13 Grammys. In 2020, the band changed its name to The Chicks.
In a social media post after Lynch’s death, The Chicks said Lynch had “infectious energy and humor” and was “instrumental” in the band’s early success.
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